[Cover photo credit to Ryan Johnson]

Mt. Crushmore Records and Jared Hart (Mercy Union, The Scandals) have surprise-released The Condor, a new, four-song EP from the New Jersey-based singer-songwriter. Serving as Hart’s first solo offering in 10 years, The Condor “examines our mortality and the lasting imprints that close friends who have passed continue to place onto our own lives.”

Featuring three originals and a cover of Mac Miller’s “Come Back  To Earth,” The Condor is a “tribute to the type of person who changes your world and your life entirely, and whose very existence makes your existence worthwhile.”

It’s for that very reason that The Condor EP exists, to pay tribute to, and ensure immortality for, a friend of Hart’s.

Hart says the friendship began in college:

There wasn’t a lot of culture there. Not a lot of people who have experienced life. There was a lack of identity. But one day this guy walks in with a shaved head and a Minor Threat shirt, and I’m there with blue hair and a Rancid shirt. We give each other this ‘What the fuck?’ look, because we were the only two on campus like that.

He would tell everyone, ‘People call me The Condor.’ And a running joke was that in front of people I’d be like, ‘No one fucking called you that. There’s not a soul on earth that calls you that!’

In March of 2022, Hart had plans to visit his friend, now in California, but received an unexpected call informing him that his dear friend had passed away.

Hart says:

Everything stood still for a while. Making this EP was literally the only way I could attempt to make sense of any of it.